image copyrightCajar
Photo caption, Eight students from the National University of Colombia disappeared between March and September 1982.Article information
- Author, Editorial
- Scroll, BBC News World
-
April 10, 2024
In 1982, 13 young Colombians, most of them university students, were detained, tortured and disappeared by police forces.
This April 8 and 9, 42 years after these events, the National University of Colombia symbolically awarded the university degree to 4 of them.
“We have searched every corner, knocked on every door and exhausted all resources in our desperate search to find Humberto,” said Teresa Sanjuán upon receiving the title from her younger brother, Samuel Humberto.
In total, the university will symbolically graduate eight students who were disappeared in 1982 due to an alliance between F2, a feared intelligence structure of the Colombian police that was dissolved in 1995, and the narcoparamilitary group associated with Pablo Escobar Muerte A Secuestradores (MAS ).
Samuel Humberto was arrested in Bogotá when he was 22 years old. He studied Anthropology. Since March 8, 1982, his family has not heard from him again nor from his brother, Alfredo Rafael, a student of Architecture and Cadastral Engineering.
Alfredo and Humberto were student leaders. According to one of many versions, they were the ones who painted the emblematic image of Che Guevara (which has been erased and repainted dozens of times) on one side of the main square of the National University.
They are two of the 13 victims of forced disappearance whose families are grouped in Collective Case 82.
Without previously knowing each other, the families of the 13 young people came together decades ago to create the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, dedicated to demanding that the disappeared be searched in Colombia.
In 1992, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held the State responsible for the disappearances. And in 2022 they were declared crimes against humanity.
According to the Search Unit for Persons Reported as Missing, there are more than 100,000 missing persons in the context of the Colombian armed conflict.
The long fight to obtain justice
Photo caption, Teresa Sanjuán, sister of the disappeared Humberto and Alfredo.
The Truth Commission, the institution created by the Peace Agreement with the FARC to reconstruct the long Colombian conflict, described the Security Statute of the government of Julio César Turbay (from 1978 to 1982) as a moment of intense stigmatization of university students of the left by the State and the public forces.
It was in this context that the eight university students, three farmers, a mechanic and a tailor were detained, tortured and disappeared by the F2 in Bogotá and Cundinamarca between March and September 1982.
They were accused without any evidence of being involved in the kidnapping and murder of the three children of drug trafficker José Jader Álvarez, ages 5, 6 and 7.
Four of them were linked to the criminal investigation.
Two were convicted after they had disappeared and, according to their lawyers, “without a fair trial having been held in which they could defend themselves with full guarantees.”
Since then, the families of the victims have accused José Jader Álvarez and law enforcement agents of collaborating to make the young people disappear.
The case was initially investigated by military justice. At least 20 officers were linked, but in 1987 a police inspector decided to close it.
In 1992, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights determined that the State was responsible for the disappearances and also decreed that the military justice system could not investigate the case because it involved serious violations of human rights.
But it was not until 2008 that the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office requested a review of the case, recognizing that there was a “prominent omission in the State’s duty to investigate.” In June 2011, the case was reopened, but since then no progress has been made either in sanctions for those responsible or in the search for the young people.
On the 40th anniversary of the disappearances, Cajar, the group of lawyers that accompanies the victims of Collective 82, asked to declare the case a crime against humanity.
The Prosecutor’s Office did so after recognizing that the investigation has been surrounded by a “halo of impunity and apathy.”
A chapter that does not close
Photo caption, According to the Search Unit for Missing Persons, more than 100,000 people disappeared in Colombia during the conflict.
Only two of the 13 missing people from Colectivo 82 have been found.
Teresa and Yolanda continue searching for their brothers, Alfredo Rafael and Samuel Humberto, and demanding justice.
“I would like to tell you that I carry your blood in my veins, your ideals in my head, your songs in my ears and your love in my life,” Hilda Maritza, daughter of Teresa, wrote in a public letter to her uncles who disappeared when she was just a girl.
Martha Ospina, daughter of another of the victims of Colectivo 82, wrote to those who disappeared to her father: “I wish that your conscience touches you and bothers you and moves you to tell the truth.”
The title that the National University grants to the eight missing persons is a measure of reparation and a tribute to their families.
“It is a fight so that the memory does not disappear. They are tributes that must be paid only for her memory, because we have no more,” said Teresa at the symbolic graduation of her brother Samuel Alberto.
The 13 missing people from Collective 82 are Orlando García Villamizar, Pedro Pablo Silva Bejarano, Alfredo Rafael Sanjuán, Samuel Humberto Sanjuán, Rodolfo Espitia Rodríguez, Edgar Helmut García Villamizar, Gustavo Campos Guevara, Hernando Ospina Rincón, Rafael Guillermo Prado, Edilbrando Joya Gómez, Francisco Antonio Medina, Bernardo Acosta Rojas and Manuel Darío Acosta Rojas.
- And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.